


eating for two

by escherzo



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Fluff, Mpreg, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-08 18:55:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16434959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/pseuds/escherzo
Summary: So I shouldn't eat this thing then,Venom says.It looks like a... tadpole?Eddie's only seen one a few times in his life. Venom doesn't have much to work on here.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry I'm late to the party, folks! Just saw the movie tonight on a date. Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
> 
> I may or may not have looked up some journal articles (I don't have proper access now bc graduated so it's a bit hit or miss, RIP my Journal of Food Science access) about phenylethamine the other day. From cursory research it appears that it's in chocolate as a result of the thermal processing but also--if you happen to want to add this into your stuff--is in a lot of fermented proteins such as cheese and fermented meat (jerky, sausage, etc). Also possibly eggs.

“Say when,” the waitress says, and starts shredding cheese on top of Eddie's salad. 

**What if we don't say when.**

Eddie bites his cheek to hide a smile and lets it continue. Anne's face goes from neutral to vaguely concerned to are-you-going-to-jump-in-a-lobster-tank-again. 

“When,” she says, finally, staring at him. “Jesus Christ.” 

There's probably only an extra pound or so on there. It doesn't seem like that much of a thing, really, though he does have to concede that his—their--sense of normal has gone through a lot of recalibrations lately. 

“You didn't tell me he was back,” she says, carefully slicing into a piece of chicken without looking at him. “He is back, isn't he.” 

“Well,” Eddie says, stretching out the vowel. He was going to bring it up at some point. It just seemed... risky. 

“It was either that or he messed with your biology bad enough that you were eating for two in the other sense,” she says, taking a bite, still without looking at him. “Cheese, though?” 

“He needs phenylethamine and it's in a lot of fermented food,” Eddie says, shrugging. “Better than heads.” 

She spits a piece of bone out onto her plate, shuddering. “I'm still trying to forget that.”

He very dutifully does not mention the half dozen heads that _have_ been eaten in the past week. They're eating, after all. Doesn't want to spoil her appetite. 

**Heads are good for us. Good for our appetite.**

“We're not going to talk about that over lunch,” Eddie says under his breath, shoving a mound of greens and parmesan into his mouth. 

“Sorry,” Anne says. 

“Not you.”

“Oh. Is he--” Her face twists, and Eddie can tell she's holding back half a dozen questions. Finally, she settles on, “You're okay, right? 

“Great.” He steers clear of “never been better.” It seems like something she might not take well.

 **But it's true, right.**

Eddie very pointedly does not answer, and also slaps at his own cheek as though a fly's landed there, for good measure. 

*

 **It is true though, right.**

Eddie takes his phone out of his back pocket and puts it up to his ear before saying, “It's not a competition, bud.” He gets less weird looks that way.

**But it's true.**

“I was happy with my life the way it was and I'm happy now. Stop it.” 

_The time I wasn't happy was when I had neither of you_ , he thinks but doesn't say, and Venom rumbles, pleased, like a purring cat. 

**What did she mean eating for two in the other sense** Venom asks, out of the blue, as they turn the corner, and Eddie nearly walks into a telephone pole. 

“Uh.”

There's still a big learning curve for Venom here on Earth. He tries to make do for the most part by rooting around in Eddie's brain when Eddie is distracted with other things, but most of the time it seems like he gets impressions rather than fully-formed ideas. It's not perfect.

Eddie's arm swings out, out of nowhere, and he grimaces. On occasions such as this one, Venom is literally poking around in his brain, and the sudden limb movements or emotions or pains in random places are just part and parcel of the experience. 

“Stop that.” 

**Sorry. But really. What did she mean.**

Eddie sighs. “It means pregnant.” He tries to push thoughts about that at Venom, clumsy explanation of reproduction for his species. 

**Weird,** Venom decides. **You don't have the parts for that**. 

“No,” Eddie says. 

**I can fix that**. 

“My parts are fine!” Eddie yelps. “My parts are normal and functioning. Please don't give me new ones.” 

Venom is quiet for a moment. **I don't have the parts for that either.**

“We're not the same species. Of course you don't.” Eddie sighs. “It's okay. What do you want for dinner?”

 **More cheese** , Venom says. **And chocolate cake, after.**

“So demanding,” Eddie says, but he's smiling, and when he feels a tendril snake out to pet at the corner of his mouth his smile widens. 

*

Eddie was self-conscious about masturbation for the first week or so, after everything. He tried to shoo Venom away, ask him to be quiet if he wouldn't leave, and got mainly an annoyed huff, so eventually he just let it be. It wasn't any less humiliating than Venom peering down at-- **Is that chocolate too** \--“No! Oh my god, do not eat that.” 

There hasn't been much audience participation thus far, but he can tell Venom is curious. Just waiting for his moment. 

**Eddie** , Venom rumbles, midway through a morning shower, and Eddie freezes, hand still wrapped around his cock. **Eddie.**

“Yes?”

**I think I have made the right parts.**

“I told you I didn't need any extras,” Eddie manages, and his face is already red from the heat, but it's getting redder. 

**They're not _your_ extras. I didn't add them.**

He's still not sure how that would even _work_ , given that they're sharing a body, parts that exist now—apparently--but aren't his. Mostly he's trying to not think about the logistics of any of this too hard. 

“Alright, bud.” He closes his eyes and tightens his grip on himself, and it's only when tendrils snake out to wrap around his wrist, his hand, that his eyes fly open again.

“Uh?”

His grip is tight now. Too tight. But he's always liked the edge of pain when he's getting off, and so he shudders, hips pushing up into the grip that is his and also theirs, chasing the sensation. 

**You like this.**

“Yeah,” he manages. More tendrils come out from his sides, his hands, holding him in place while a hand that is more theirs than his strokes him off hard and fast, and he hisses, other hand scrabbling for purchase on the slick shower wall. It isn't doing him any good. A tendril slips down his back and down further, teasing at him, and he comes, just like that, unable to hold it back. 

His eyes are closed, but he can tell Venom's stuck his head out, because that's definitely a tongue and not just a tendril licking him clean, after. 

**Not sure if this will work** , Venom says, and Eddie opens his eyes just long enough to see a few tendrils grabbing a handful of come off his stomach and disappearing with it. 

“Uh.”

**We know what the organs for this are supposed to look like. What they do. But--**

“Venom,” Eddie says, still trying to get his breath back. “Are you trying to knock us up right now.” 

**... Maybe** , Venom concedes. **We don't know if it will work.**

“For the record,” Eddie says, twisting around to turn the shower off. “It's generally polite to ask before you try something like that.”

**Oh. Eddie, can I “knock us up.”**

Eddie sighs. “Well, too late now. But. Yes.”

*

**Eddie. Eddie, we are sick. We want to get rid of the lunch we just ate. How do we fix this.**

“You got yourself into this, love,” Eddie says, crouching down over the toilet. “You know how you asked if you could knock us up?”

He retches. 

**Yes?**

“Either that mobster didn't agree with us or it worked.”

**This is _normal_ for your species?**

“Yup.”

He ordered a half dozen types of pregnancy tests off Amazon a few days ago. So either they're all wrong, or the lunch he's having with Anne and Dan tomorrow is about to be ten thousand times more awkward than it already would be. 

**So I shouldn't eat this thing then,** Venom says. **It looks like a... tadpole?** Eddie's only seen one a few times in his life. Venom doesn't have much to work on here. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, weirdly zen about Venom having stuck a uterus somewhere in him, somehow. “They all look like that, early on.” 

**Huh.**

“You wanted to get stuck to a sexually reproductive alien,” Eddie says, shrugging. “Let's just hope it doesn't need to find a host when it's born.”

**We would find it the perfect host.**

“It's not really that easy. You got lucky, with me.”

 **I did** , Venom says, reaching out to stroke over Eddie's abdomen. **We will find a way to make it work.**

“Yeah,” Eddie says, fingers interlacing with the tendrils on him. “Yeah, we will.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i need to get around to replying to comments but there was a lot of "sequel?" happening and so this happened

Lunch starts out on an awkward foot. 

“You're not still in late-stage organ failure I assume,” Dan says, as though that's a normal thing to kick off conversation with, and Anne elbows him. 

“No,” Eddie says, trying to shush Venom before he has additional thoughts to contribute about Dan and his general existence-- _he's fine, he was just trying to help, do NOT eat him, he didn't know, yes I know he thought you were murdering me but you sort of were at the time_.

 **We weren't doing it on _purpose_ ,** Venom huffs. **When your species is out of food you start digesting your own organs too.**

“It's been four months and he's still here,” Anne offers, carefully picking the sausage off the pizza in front of her and putting it on Eddie's plate. 

Dan raises an eyebrow. 

“He needs certain chemicals to keep us running,” Eddie says, no time to pause before Venom takes control of their arm and shoves all of the sausage into their mouth. “Fermented food's good for that.” 

“Oh,” Dan says, eyes lighting up. “Which ones? Do they help with organ regeneration? Could they--"

Venom sighs in Eddie's head. **Can we borrow him for a moment,** he asks, flat, and Eddie shrugs. 

“I don't have the science background to explain any of this right, Dan. He wants to borrow you so he can just explain it himself. In your head. That okay?”

Dan hesitates for a moment and then shrugs too. “I... guess?” 

Eddie grabs Dan's hand and watches as Venom transfers, Dan's eyes flashing white for a moment. He doesn't say anything, during, but his eyes go wide and his mouth drops open more than once. And then, just like that, he reaches out and grabs Eddie's hand and Venom is back again. 

Anne stares at him, barely-concealed concern on her face, and Dan shrugs. “I feel fine,” he offers. “Also I think I probably just made about six breakthroughs on my research, and Eddie's pregnant.” 

“Eddie's _what now._ ” 

“Uh,” Eddie says, “I was planning to—ease into that one.” 

“I was pregnant for about ten seconds there,” Dan says, and he's produced a notepad from somewhere and is furiously scribbling on it. “He says it's his uterus, not yours, and I understood how that worked for a moment and now it's gone, but it's the same principle that lets you—“ He shudders. “Look, your stomach isn't normally big enough to eat entire humans but apparently you manage semi-regularly because Venom makes a space for it. Same idea.” 

“You're _still eating people?_ ” Anne asks, grimacing. 

“Only really bad people?” Eddie tries to smile winningly, but he's getting the impression it's not going over as well as he'd hoped. “Like, _really_ bad.”

“That isn't really as reassuring as you think it is,” Anne says.

 **”Eddie likes the kidneys the best,”** Venom says through his mouth, because he is a _traitor_. **”Soft and juicy, like a good steak.”**

Anne and Dan have both gone—well. Whiter than their default, anyway. 

“You are _not helping_ ,” Eddie hisses. Louder, he says, “ _Really_ bad. We ate a child trafficking ring last week.” 

Dan's face looks a bit like a frog's, briefly, and then he offers, “I can't really argue with that. You are getting adequate prenatal nutrition, right? Have you seen anyone about that?”

“We got vitamins, yeah.” 

“Are we just—“ Anne's face pinches. “Venom, you hitched a ride in me, I _know_ your species reproduces asexually.” 

**”We... improvised,”** Venom says. **”We had female human hosts, and knew what the parts were supposed to look like and how they functioned—they're badly designed, by the way—and so we made our own.”**

“Badly designed?”

 **”We fixed them with you,”** Venom offers, and Anne blinks. 

“... What do you mean fixed them,” she says, but her eyes are wide and she keeps glancing at Dan, and Eddie is pretty sure she knows exactly how. “Is that why--”

 **“No more blood or pain,”** Venom says, and Eddie can feel the pleased hum of a job well done soaking through them. **”Occasional heats though, like our other mammal hosts had. Much simpler.”**

Anne goes very red and very pointedly does not look at Dan and, oh. Well then. 

“So, anyway, yeah, I'm with child,” Eddie says, because the silence has stretched out long enough to become excruciatingly awkward. “Or V is. I was the one who got the morning sickness though.” 

“Where did you even _put_ a uterus?” Dan asks, and Venom is conspicuously quiet and also there's a low-level thrum of guilt in Eddie's system that is definitely not his. 

_What did you do._

**The fight with Riot,** Venom explains, still guilty. **We had to find a quick source of energy to heal you so you would live. There wasn't anything else.**

_Which organ am I missing right now._

**We made _very sure_ it was optional,** Venom says. **Appendixes are dangerous anyway. If they burst they can kill you. Also part of your liver? But we put that back.**

“Apparently when I was busy being stabbed to death by Carlton Drake he ate my appendix for energy to fix it,” Eddie says. 

Dan blinks. “Well. You—can survive without that. The literature I've read recently does imply it's not useless, though. It helps filter the blood.”

**We eat the things that aren't supposed to be in the blood. The other day you had four cells that were supposed to be killed by your immune system but got missed. They were delicious, by the way.**

“I think he's handling that,” Eddie says, faintly. “Do you think you could do an ultrasound sometime, though? It doesn't have to be soon. It's just--He keeps telling me about our—y'know. But I haven't gotten to see it yet.” 

Anne rests her forehead gently onto the bun of her sandwich. “What are you going to do if it needs its own host?” 

“Get a dog?” Eddie offers, smiling, and not really fooling anyone involved about the risks of all of this. Venom would probably try to eat the dog. Realistically. 

*

“So, you're... about six months along,” Dan offers, and he really has to have seen some shit to be as chill about all of this as he is. The gel for the ultrasound was so cold that Venom briefly manifested for the sole purpose of forming middle fingers to direct at him, and also he's being his own ultrasound tech because the baby is definitely not in a standard place. “Heartbeat looks good, but also occasionally the baby just turns into a pile of goo and then goes back to being normal-shaped. I... assume for the two of you that's probably nothing to worry about.” 

“Six?” Eddie asks, staring. It's been two months since Venom's attempt to knock them up in the shower. 

**“We sped things up,”** Venom contributes, hijacking Eddie's mouth. **”The gestation period seemed inconvenient.”**

“But when it's not goo it—looks like a normal baby?” Eddie asks, and Dan nods. 

“I have no idea what—it's going to be when it's born, or _how_ it's going to be born, but. Yes, other than that whole thing this isn't as weird of an ultrasound as I was expecting.” 

Huh. 

_We don't even have an apartment with a spare room yet,_ Eddie grouses. _Don't speed it up that much._

Out loud, he says, “Do you—happen to know of anyone looking for a tenant? Our apartment isn't... exactly set up for this.”

Dan hmms. “I can ask around. I... may have to misrepresent you slightly, given the circumstances, but there's probably something.” 

Eddie hasn't really processed the whole thing yet, but he nods. 

Christ, he's three months—three if Venom gives them that much and doesn't just get bored of keeping an extra resident alive—from being a _dad_. What the fuck. He's not ready. He has no idea what he's doing. Venom keeps trying to bleed calm and contentment into their bond, and it's only sort of working given the circumstances. 

“How many kids do you have?” Eddie asks as they walk out of the hospital. “Two? Three?” 

**Six,** Venom says, and then stops for a moment. **Seven? Maybe seven.**

Oh good god. 

“Did you actually raise any of those?” 

**We—don't. That's not how our species works.**

“Okay, well. If this kid you're keeping in the spot where my appendix was is at least half human then you're going to get a crash course in how _my_ species works, because we can't just leave kids behind and have them turn out okay.” 

**We need—a month? A year?**

Eddie laughs outright. “At least fifteen or sixteen years, dear. They can't even hold their own heads up at first. That alone takes months.” 

**... Oh.**

“Yeah, see, this was why I said you should have asked first.” 

**We are not set up for this at all.**

“Nope.”

**We're fucked, aren't we.**

“Yup.”

**Love you.**

“I love you too, but Christ, what a mess you got us into.”

**Could still eat it.**

“No, no,” Eddie says, waving a hand. “We'll manage.”

**We're not ready.**

“Nobody's ever actually ready. Just don't speed things up any more. We're going to need these three months.”

*

Maria Edie Brock is born two months later, because Venom is willing to be patient, but not _that_ patient, in a hospital room closed to all nurses and visitors and everyone who isn't Dan or Anne or Eddie. Venom takes over before they even got into the room, and Dan doesn't have to do any emergency-or-otherwise C-sections, because Venom just casually rips their side open and pulls Maria out like it's just another spawning. 

“Oh my holy Jesus Christ,” Dan chokes, hand going to his collar like he's still ten and wearing a rosary. 

**”We will heal,”** Venom says, calm, **”but Eddie might need some blood. Also if you have any brains to spare, we will need the energy.”**

“I could have given you a clean incision,” Dan manages. “I know you can fix it, but the _tearing_ \--”

“Brains?” Venom asks again, like a cheery zombie, and Eddie's face pokes out for a moment, dazed but there. 

“She okay?” Eddie asks, and Dan is so busy trying to make sure Maria is human enough to at least approximate an Apgar score that he forgets to answer entirely. 

“She seems fine,” Anne manages after a moment, and Maria wails, as though in answer, and then turns into black goo in Dan's arms for a moment before reforming into something more baby-shaped. 

“Right. Blood. Also maybe brains. I'll be right back,” Dan says, eyes wild. 

“She's perfect,” Eddie says, cradling her to his side. _Hungry_ , he hears, a voice that isn't Venom's coming through. “Dan might need to bring more food though. Ow, _fuck,_ ” 

“He's working on it,” Anne says, voice very carefully calm like she is trying very hard to not lose her shit. 

Eddie is, mercifully, A-positive blood, which means there is plenty on hand to spare. It's hard enough trying to coordinate all of this without calling for a nurse--Anne is trying to help, but trained she is not. As soon as Eddie is hooked up he's gone again, looking for food. Venom has started to knit everything back together, but their energy reserves won't be enough to finish the job.

“I guess you don't need to worry about teething,” Dan manages, rushing back into the room with a cooler to find her cradled in the crook of Eddie's arm, mid-wail. She already has teeth. A lot of teeth. Whether or not they're the same ones she'll keep to adulthood is another story. 

He opens up the cooler and hands over what food he could find. All of the lunches in the fridge, and a quick raid of one of the biohazard bins in the basement. Sometimes the organs for transplant don't make it in fast enough to be of use to anyone. It's a tragedy to have to just—throw them out.

At least he has a good source for recycling them now. Eddie feeds her first; she devours everything handed to her like it's nothing and once her tiny, squashy features move towards contentment, Eddie starts in himself.

“Thanks,” Eddie says, still looking very much like himself only with more, well—it's really kind of alarming to see that many teeth attached to a human face. What Eddie is eating is... more alarming. “We've got the bleeding stopped but V scraped up my spleen pretty good getting her out, and we're still working on that.” 

He licks his lips before he drops a liver into his mouth, and Dan is trying very, very hard to be calm in moments like these, and it's only sort of working.

Probably he should take up meditating. 

*

“Shhh, shh, who's a good baby, you are, shh, calm now,” Eddie murmurs, rocking Maria back and forth, and she ignores the bottle he holds out for her in favor of trying to surge up and take a chunk out of his shoulder instead. 

**Drink,** Venom murmurs, tendrils wrapping around her. **Your papa looks delicious, I know, but he isn't food.**

 _Hungry,_ she complains, a sound they can hear through touch, still too young to be able to speak aloud, and Venom hmms an affirmation. **Bad guys on the menu tonight. You can have the liver.**

Hunting with her along was terrifying in concept, but in practice she's small enough in goo form that she's able to just stick to them if the situation calls for it, and she is always very, very hungry. Eddie could buy out the formula section of every grocery store in the city and it would probably barely make a dent.

 _Kidneys?_ she asks, hopeful.

“You can have one,” Eddie says, still trying to get her to take a bottle. “You're not big enough for both yet.”

Her face scrunches, like a cry is coming on, and Eddie winces in advance.

 **Listen to your papa,** Venom says, because he's a saint. **Only one for you. You're too small.**

Eddie will absolutely be enjoying the other one. But he's the one who went through four hours of extremely weird, dissociative pain-but-not-exactly that he was partially shielded from when Venom literally just tore into his side and scooped her out, so he feels like he's earned this, a bit. 

_Fine,_ she huffs, as much as a baby can huff. She reaches out with a tendril and taps Eddie with it, and Eddie smiles.

So maybe this is all a little bit of a disaster.

So maybe that's okay.


End file.
